Watership Down 2

Captain No-Hops was the name of our bunny. A lot of people said he was the most disgusting thing they'd ever seen. I remember the term one guy used was "tragically cute". We loved him despite his infirmity, but it was hard. He cost us a few friends, me and my Mom. Quentin, who was my best friend, stopped coming over because he couldn't stand to look at it. Then we stopped hanging out altogethor.

Quentin Lawrence had a cool Dad. He let us play with firecrackers, taste his beer, and touch his gun when he was done cleaning it. “Clean boots, a clean gun and a clean diet and a man can live forever,” he would tell us time and time again. Then he would pop the tab on a can of Hamm’s and say, “But two out of three ain’t so bad neither.”

One of the cool things he did was teach his sons, Quentin and Marshall, how to hunt. He wouldn’t let them use his rifles, except a pellet gun for squirrels and birds. He said they didn’t need guns anyway. “Guns are for protection,” He’d say with a serious look on his face. “Sure, guns are fun. They’re a shitload a' fun, but they ain’t for fun. Hunting is fun too and it can be for fun. It can also be for food, and for clothes, if you were Indian you could even hunt for shelter and that’s why you need to know it. If you lose everything, you can still hunt,” and he’d swig from his beer. “And you can hunt with anything. Knives, bows, sticks, traps, I even killed a buck with my bare hands.” And his fingers would curl as if there was a fat hunk of something between em, his eyes’d go wild and he’d fling his arm back and point at the wall behind him.

There was a buck mounted on the wall; its head and neck were as big as my whole trunk, maybe bigger, and it had these long purple welts across the neck. When he stopped talking, we would just sit there looking at him and that deer behind him. He could probably finish a whole ‘nother beer there without us saying a peep. Usually, he did.

Quentin’s father was like a statue, he was strong and tall. He was only a little bigger than regular men but in every direction. His hair grew out shaggy, he had a big knob of a nose and a big chin you could tie a string around. His hands were huge. There was no doubt in my mind that those hands could have wringed a deer’s neck. In other words, he was nothin’ like Quentin’s Mom. She was a librarian at our school, and she looked it. She was short, and mousy and looked a little old for her age. She had glasses and a high voice, her hair was graying early and her face was kind of pointy. She mostly wore loose clothes but at some point I noticed that she kinda had a nice body. Mostly I tried not to look.

“I can’t believe him and your Mom were ever in love,” I’d tell Quentin.

“Nah, I don’t think it was love,” he’d say. “No, they stayed together for something else but it wasn’t love.”

I think he knew what it was but he never let on.

“Quentin’s Dad was big” she would recall, when she was thinking fondly of him, or perhaps “Quentin’s Dad was big.”

There was one time when me and Quentin were being spies, and we were listening to her and Miss Wilkins drink wine and talk where I heard her say, “Big and dumb, that’s how I like em,” and then they clinked their glasses and I heard her say something like, “I tell you, I should be lookin at the guys who don’t pass my class”

It's funny what kinda things you remember. That was the first, most sexual thing I'd ever heard an adult woman say. It stuck with me for years. That’s about the time I had to stop looking at Quentin’s mother’s body. That’s also about the time I started slacking with my homework.

One day, I went over to Quentin's house, and in the bathroom I noticed that there was a shirt hanging over the shower that was covered in blood. I didn't ask him about it. There was stuff like that all the time. It wasn't Quentin's shirt. Marshall was probably gutting some fish or dressing some deer. Quentin was excited about something that day but he didn't say what. We played some games, then some videogames, made some popcorn and watched TV. During one of the commercials, he turned the volume all the way down, looked at me and whispered, "I've got to show you something."

He led me up to his room and pulled a box out from under his bed. He pulled the lid off and held it out for me to look at. I could vaguely make out a lump inside.

"Go on. Take it."

I reached in and felt something soft at one end and hard, and wet, at the other. I thought it was a joke, like an old moldy vegetable he'd been saving just so he could do this. Before I could make out what it was, Quentin blurted out, "It's a lucky rabbit's foot!"

It didn't look like the rabbit's feet I'd gotten before. Those were small, about the size of my thumb, balls of fluff dyed magenta and turquoise at the ends of keychains. This was grey and big; it had claws that moved when you pressed on the pads of the foot. The other end was bone and tendon. The fur was matted down with still-wet blood.

"You've got one. Marshall got one. I got one, and Rob got one. But there's more. Follow me."

Quentin led me down the stairs, out the door, through his backyard to our secret meetingplace in the woods. On the ground was another cardboard box. It seemed to glow, lit up by a lone beam of moonlight that somehow found its way through the trees. Quentin opened it and there was a terrible noise and an overwhelming smell of piss. It was a bunny, about two feet in length, and it was screaming.

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

It sounded like a needle scratching a record. The bottom of the box was lined with blood that splashed when the scared rabbit kicked what was left of its legs.

"You get to kill it. Then you can be a hunter like me and my brother. We caught it."

I felt sick to my stomach. Before I could respond, I could feel him nudging me with something. It was an old hammer.

"Come on, you'd be like my Dad." He tried to hand the hammer to me but it dropped to the ground. I could feel the tears forming in my eyes.
"I don't. I can't." I begged.
"Look, it's hurt. It's gonna die. You'd be putting it out of its misery."
"Why don't you?"
"Because, you gotta do this?"
"I won't."
"Look, don't be a fag. Just do it."
"No."
"If you don't do this, you can't come over anymore."
"I don't want to."
"If you don't, then I'm not your friend anymore."

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I was crying and he was screaming and so was the bunny. I took off, just started running into the woods. I was always afraid of being lost there at night. It was my only nightmare. Kids at school said there were Satanists in the woods, murderers and wild animals, that there were parts of the woods that the sun never touched, that were dark all day. In my dreams, when I was lost in the woods, I never could see what got me. Night fell early, and the woods were pitch black already. I ran blind with my eyes burning, farther and fasster than I'd ever run before. I didn't know if Quentin had tried to follow me, but I must've lost him by the time I thought about it. Somehow I made it all the way across, without running into anyone or anything.

When I was at the very end of the woods, through blurred vision I could see the glow of streetlights. I pushed my way through the brambles and onto the road where a pair of headlights were fast approaching. Whoever it was, was honking. The honking got louder as the lights, which were all I could see, got brighter. I stepped back and, just as I was afraid the car would hit me, it slowed; I heard the mechanical hum of a window rolling down and then, strangely enough, my own name.

"Tyler! Tyler! Get in the car this instant!"

Mom.

"You have been gone for hours, Tyler. Hours! Where were you? I called that degenerate father of Quentin's and he didn't know where you were, big surprise. Do you know--" She saw how hard I was crying and realized that I'd just come through the woods alone, "What's wrong? What happened?"

"Quentin told me to do something I...didn't...want....to do." I started crying again and could only tell her in little bursts.

"Well whatever he told you to do, you know you doin't have to do," She said it in her Mom voice, in her meaningful voice. It came off as rote, though, because she said it the same way she'd said it before.

"But...it'll...die...anyway."

"What...will die?"

"The...the bunny."

I stopped there. She stopped the car.

"We'll go back tomorrow. If it's still alive, I promise I'll fix it."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

"And...if its not?"

"Then that's just nature taking its course." I sniffled in hard, and my tears subsided. "You really are a sweet boy, Tyler."

Now I know that she wasn't really prepared for what she saw the next day. There was no way she could have been. We went out early in the morning. I asked her not to call Quentin, who was at his Mom'sd house anyways. We parked across the street from Quentin's Dad's house, walked around to the back and through the yard. I was afraid Quentin's Dad would see us but he was rarely, if ever, up before eleven. This was the first time I'd taken a grown-up to our secret spot. I was breaking an oath. I wanted to tell her to close her eyes but I couldn't ask her. I was walking behind her, giving her directions. I didn't want to be the first one to see it.

"Is it...in the box?"

"Yes." I looked and there was a new box. There was no blood seeping through at the bottom. Maybe Quentin thought I'd rat him out and switched the boxes. Maybe this time it really was a rotten vegetable. I hoped. I stood a few feet away as she opened the box, and screamed.

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

"Tyler, close your eyes," she yelled and I shut them as tight as I could, and listened to the sound of vomit splattering into the dirt.

"Can I open them now?"

"Have you seen it?"

"Yes."

"Okay then." And then silence.

I looked inside. The same rabbit, with four bloody gauze tourniquets wrapped around it's legs. I was hit with the overpowering smell of piss and ammonia. This wasn't like the animals in Mr. Lawrence's den. They were stuffed and...noble. They fought and lost to a stronger foe. That's the way he told it. The rabbit was different. It was hurt and pathetic, maybe crazy and fighting for its life.

"Did you do this?"
"No, I didn't."
"God, what's wrong with that family?"
"Can we fix it?"
"I don't know."
"You promised."
"I know."

She was calm, but tears were streaming down her face as she bent down to pick up the box.

"I can take it Mom."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."

I lifted the box and it started hissing at me.

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The whole way to the vet's office it rolled around in the box against its will, flailing it's limbs and hissing, shaking and screaming and pissing on itself. At the vet's, I could hear bits and pieces of conversation from right outside the door.

"This isn't like a dog, here. This rabbit will be immobile. It would be cruel to keep it alive."

He was wrong. When he started to move again, when he didn't need the pain medication so much, he had the energy of a rabbit half his age, happily scooting all around the floor in the frenchroom. He would go like this for weeks and then stop, and then for weeks he wouldn't move at all. He would just lie on a pillow on the floor, getting fat. We'd have to place his food on his chest for him to eat it, and if he didn't, it would cake there. The older he got, the shorter the intervals between active and passive. Towards the end, he barely moved at all.

I wasn't allowed to see Quentin for the rest of the summer. A week before the first day of school my mother told me to call him.

"I don't think he wants to talk to me."
"Oh, I bet he misses you."
"Maybe." Meaning probably not. She handed me the phone.
"Tyler, hey, how are you doing?"
"I'm alright."
"Look man, I'm really sorry."
"It's okay."
"I couldn't kill it either."
"I figured."
"But the weirdest thing happened, the box disappeared."
"No it didn't."
"What do you mean."
"I saved it."
"You saved, like, it's body?"
"No. I saved its life. Me and my Mom."
"How is it?"
"Fine."
"Does it have legs? Like, prosthetics or something?"
"No."
"I gotta see it."
"Okay."

Quentin came over the next day. Luckily, Captain No-Hops, as one of my cousins named him, was in an active mood. He was scooting all over the room, chewing on whatever furniture he could reach.

"He looks like a turkey."
"What?"
"Like a turkey after you take the skin off, with an extra set of wings...where its legs should be."
"And the head of a rabbit."
"Yeah, and fur."

We collapsed on the couch laughing. It was good to have my best friend back. And it was good to have the bunny, no matter how much work it was.

When we first took him home, the vet gave us a big bottle of sedatives, which he needed while his wounds recovered. He couldn't believe we were going to take care of this rabbit that would never move again. Two months later, skin had grown back over most of its legs, and patches of fur over the skin. He stopped wailing when the lights went out at night. He lost that look of anguish in his big watery black eyes. Then we noticed something. He was spinning his arms. We had him propped on a pillow on his back and he was making little windmills with his forearms, which looked like flippers. He knocked himself forward, onto his face. We just looked, my mother and I, waiting for him to wail. It didn't. It was like watching a toddler learning to walk, but instead of walking. he learned to scoot. It was hard to watch him as he first learned how to propel himself. He would only use his front legs and drag the rest across the carpet. He wore his fur thin and his belly raw before figuring out how to use his hind legs, like oars bumping across the ground, to move. He got pretty speedy, or could, when he wanted to. Then he could do anything. Almost.

We set up a bottle, like the kind hamsters and caged bunnies use, for him to drink water, and usually medicine, at his leisure. That meant that five times a day my mother and I would have to pick him up and hold him over a litter box and give him a squeeze to let him know it was time to go. We kept him on a strict schedule so it would be easier for him to adapt, a schedule that I had forgotten about the day Quentin came over.

"Tyler, have you taken No-Hops out yet, this afternoon?" Mom was pissed.
"No, Mom."
"Do you want him to go all over the couch?"
"No, Mom."
"Cause, that's where you've got him."
"We wanted to pet him."
"That's fine but you can't neglect your duties. He can't do it on his own like a normal rabbit." Quentin and the rabbit stared at us.

She walked to the couch and picked him up. I guess she grabbed him too hard cause he took it as a sign that he was supposed to start. His ears stiffened and he pissed a straight line all the way from the couch to the litter box, the whole time trying to kick his little legs out of the way of the stream. She just made it to the box when the first turd dropped.

Quentin looked on in horror. His face went white and he shook like he was cold all of a sudden. I don't know if it was seeing the result of what he and his brother had done or if it was just all too weird for him.

"Miss Burton? I think I need to go home." She was still holding the rabbit about the waist over the box, petting it's stomach gently with her indexfinger and trying to hold in her breath.

"Really? I was hoping to have you over for dinner."

"Yeah? So did my Dad. Thanks anyway." And he was out the door.

It took months to get in touch with him again. At school, they put us in different classes that year. I found out that his Mom had arranged it only days before school started. Some kids wouldn't talk to me and some looked at me with an odd curiosity. Could it be, I wondered, that everyone thinks I'm diferent because I have a weird pet? I hated the the rabbit that day, when I had that realization, and wished I'd never come back to help.

When I saw Quentin next, it was the first day of practice for the basketball team. We'd both tried out, and both gotten in. We talked afterwards. He apologized for being weird to me and told me he was just unsettled after he saw the rabbit last time. He said that he really liked the rabbit and wanted to come over and see it again, but would have to leave the room when I "drained" it. Unfortunately, Captain No-Hops was particularly slothful that week that Quentin came over, he was gassy and lethargic. Still, Quentin pretended like he was cute or maybe he just didn't notice and really believed it. Then he did something weird, he went up to the rabbit and grabbed one of it's stumps, like he was going to shake it's nonexistent paw.

Suddenly, Captain No-Hops shook himself alert, and looked Quentin right in the face with sad, hollow eyes and screamed.

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

It was like the screams we'd heard when we first took the lid off the box. Shivers crawled up our spines and took root underneath our skin. Quentin didn't offer up any fake explanations this time. He just ran. I never talked to him in person again.

I cursed the rabbit for that, for three times costing me my best friend, for not getting all the way better, for getting worse, for not dying. At night, I had nightmares about the rabbit. In one, there is nothing but darkness. I'm sitting and I can't make it to my feet. I feel around but there are no switches to turn on the lights, no windows or doors. Nothing. Then the lid comes off. There's light, my skin is blue, shimmering in the moonlight. A shadow falls on my face, four shadows lumped together. Marshall is there, Quentin is there, and Rob is there, each sixty feet high and each one holding a saw. The fourth figure is a rabbit, foam drips from its mouth and its eyes are narrow slits of green. It holds in its paw a hammer. Around it's neck, an arm hangs limp on a chain. The arm has been painted a sickly mint green.

"Hit him," they tell him. "He's hurt, he'll die."

I look around, my arms and legs have been severed at the joints. I try to get up onto my knees but it burns and I fall on my face. I roll over because I'm afraid to have my back to them.

"No," the rabbit says. "Lets make him hurt. Lets keep him alive."

They drop their tools and come at me with gauze. The tight knots around my arms and legs swell and pulse as the blood tries to escape. I scream as they place the lid back on. I wake up, screaming, "No, don't leave me here!"

That was one. In the other, Captain No-Hops scoots around the floor around my bed, but more than scooting he's swimming through the carpet like a shark. I know that he's going to attack me, he's going to try and rip my face off with his teeth, tear off my arms and legs. He knows it too but he just keeps swimming. He wants the fear to get me first. When he lifts his head above the carpet his mouth is open. I can see all the way to his throat. I jolt out of bed. There are variations of the dream where I kill him right there in the carpet/water. I pull a hammer from under my pillow and hit him over and over again until he stops, and floats, drifting ambitionless towards the door. After this version of the dream, I usually throw up.

The last time I heard from Quentin was at the end of the year. It was a little yellow post-it note on my locker, that said "I'm sorry" in his handwriting. A few days earlier, Marshall and Rob, Marshall's friend from church, broke into my locker and left their rabbit's feet there with a note that said, "We heard about your problem. You're rabbit doesn't have enough feet. Take these." One was messed up, parts of it were hard and black, like someone had tried to set it on fire and singed the fur. I cried and hid in the bathroom til the end of the day. I waited half an hour past the last bell before leaving. I left the two paws in the toilet.

Rob dropped out that year. I forget why. Marshall never finished the 8th grade because his family, him Quentin and their mother, moved away. Apparently, Mr. Lawrence stopped paying child support, and when she sued for it he skipped town. When she finally caught up with him, he was in jail in Cleveland for trying to hold up a convenience store. I held that rifle, I thought as they played the security tape on the local news. No one got hurt in the robbery. I thought he was gonna shoot the clerk from the look on his face but there was an undercover cop right there in the corner of the store, reading the news and drinking coffee. I don't know how it happened but she ended up remarrying him in prison, and moved the whole family down to Ohio.

"She was a weird woman," my Mom said, as the whole story bled out from one gossip to another.

Captain No-Hops lived a longer life than anyone could have expected. I loved him, and experienced all of the emotions that fall under the umbrella of love: hate, disgust, bitterness, annoyance, the deep-seated feeling that he was consciously trying to sabotage me. When he died though, it felt to soon, and I experienced all of the general stages of grief that one does when a loved one dies. Mainly I blamed his death on everyone around else. My mother. Her boyfriend. Quentin. Marshall. The vet. The thing was, he died outside. He had not been outside in half a decade, except for that one or two days a year when the grass was soft and overgrown, the dirt was wet and the weather was right and I'd let him slither around, marking his territory at his leisure and sniff the ground for females. But who would take him outside? After months of accusations and denials came the final stage. Acceptance. He had died, and somehow he had died in the place where he was born, in the place where rabbits are supposed to die. In a bed of warm grass underneath a tall tree next to a mangled bush. Outside.